Exhibit: Giselle Farmore & Jason Reed

Left Pillar. Start of intro/preface: “Unburying the past.” Young girl holding up a skull next to a gravesite, lots of onlookers.

Right Pillar. Epilogue, “Fighting over the Alamo.”  Depiction of native man standing and speaking in front of Alamo.  https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2019/04/13/competing-cemetery-proposals-could-affect-alamo-plans/5444742007/

1. Chapter 1:  “Painting the White Shaman Mural.”  Image of native man on a ladder made from logs, painting part of mural.  See digitally enhanced rendering:  https://sanantonioreport.org/archaeologists-have-recorded-233-ancient-art-sites-along-texas-border-with-mexico-now-they-want-to-discover-the-meanings-behind-the-murals/
2. Chapter 2:  “Shelter at Last.”  Depiction of Cabeza de Vaca, Estebanico, and a few other Spaniards in rags near the ocean shore being welcomed by Karankawas, guided to a lodge.  Make sure some Karankawas are women. See this depiction of a coastal Karankawa settlement:  http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/guadbay/images/Weir-Guadalupe-Bay.html
3. Chapter 3:  “Caddo Country.”  Depiction of Caddo Indians and their distinctive buildings.  See https://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2017-03-10/day-trips-caddo-mounds-historic-site-alto/ for reconstructed structures, here for depiction of buildings with fields and people:  https://www.thc.texas.gov/historic-sites/caddo-mounds/caddo-mounds-history
4. Chapter 4: “A New Civilization.”  Depiction of Comanche encampment, lots of teepees, women visible processing hides.  See Catlin watercolors in this article:  https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/comanche-indians
5. Chapter 5:  “Esteban and Erasmo.”  Depiction of two men, both pretty white, well clad, sitting at table in adobe house.  Historical images of Erasmo’s son are here:  https://www.sanjacinto-museum.org/Library/Veteran_Bios/Bio_page/?id=745&army=Texian and an image of Esteban is here: https://www.humanitiestexas.org/programs/tx-originals/list/stephen-f-austin
6. Chapter 6, “Austin in the Dungeon.”  Depiction of Austin lying in Mexico City dungeon, thick stone walls, looking up to sunlight through small skylight.  Description and images of place of imprisonment can be found here:  https://medium.com/save-texas-history/the-inquisition-dungeon-of-stephen-f-austin-ef258d1c73be
7. Chapter 7, “Merely a Barn.”  Depiction of Texas’ very simple 1830s capitol in Houston.  Similar buildings can be seen at https://blogs.baylor.edu/texascollection/2016/05/16/texas-over-time-texas-state-capitols/.
8. Chapter 8, “The white man and the red man cannot dwell in harmony together.”  Depiction of Mirabeau B. Lamar writing or giving speech.  Images of Lamar here:  https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/lamar-mirabeau-buonaparte.
9. Chapter 9, “Going to Texas.”  Depiction of slave auction, with woman being sold away from her children.
10. Chapter 10, “Juneteenth.”  Depiction of early Juneteenth celebration, formally dressed African Americans (please make sure many women visible).  Some photos here:  https://blog.newspapers.com/june-19-1865-the-first-juneteenth-celebration/
11. Chapter 11, “A Bison Hunt.”  Kiowa running down bison in enclosure made by automobiles. 
12. Chapter 12, “Cattle Drive.”  Depiction of longhorn drive, capture enormous number of animals being moved.  Some images here:  https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/concepts-african-american-history/african-americans-on-western-cattle-drives-1868-1885/
13. Chapter 13, “Going to Church.”  Depiction of congregants (including women and children) entering a church, decent-sized building but simple lines and construction, perhaps something like this:  https://seatonchurch.org/history.
14. Chapter 14, “Farmers Alliance.”  Depiction of Alliance members standing on porch of simple building.  Women as well as men, cleanly if not fancily dressed.  See https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM3397
15. Chapter 15, “A Lynch Mob.”  White citizens, including women and children, gathered on courthouse yarn, festive seeming.  Perhaps a gallows in the background or a noose hanging from an oak branch in the distance, and a camera station set up, but no graphic violence.
16. Chapter 16, “Votes for Women.”  White women in open canopy car with suffragist banners, patriotic bunting.  Example here: https://montanawomenshistory.org/the-long-campaign-2/
17. Chapter 17, “A Gusher.”  Depiction of blown out oil well, with tower of oil gushing up from partially broken wooden derrick.  One photo in this entry:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindletop
18. Chapter 18, “The Sounds of the Larger World.” Depiction of black family listening to radio in living room.  One depiction here, but of a wealthier family than I’d like: https://teachrock.org/lesson/radio-before-rock-and-roll/
19. Chapter 19, “Leadbelly and John Lomax.”  Leadbelly should have a guitar or accordian.  Images of him:  https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/leadbelly.html?sortBy=relevant; images of Lomax: https://texashighways.com/culture/history/ballad-hunters-alan-john-lomax-preserved-work-little-known-musicians/
20. Chapter 20, “Laid to Rest.”  Depiction of Private Felix Longoria’s family by his flag-draped casket at Arlington National Cemetery.  Photo here:  https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/2023/04/11/until-you-are-remembered/
21. Chapter 21, “A Mink Coat Mob.”  Depiction of mob, mostly women, protesting LBJ in Dallas.  https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/us/politics/bruce-alger-former-congressman-whose-protest-against-lyndon-johnson-backfired-dies-at-96.html
22. Chapter 22, “Running for Freedom.”  Jerry Levias on the field.  https://www.wfaa.com/article/features/originals/former-smu-football-player-jerry-levias-sees-parallels-from-1960s-current-protests/287-8ba96392-f371-4abf-9776-51d7d7978611
23. Chapter 23, “Norma McCorvey.” Depiction of a middle-aged Norma McCorvey, perhaps with two signs behind her – “Keep abortion safe and legal” and “Pro-Life.”  One photo here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/how-the-real-jane-roe-shaped-the-abortion-wars
24. Chapter 24, “Barton Springs.”  Depiction of swimmers in natural swimming pool.  https://www.edwardsaquifer.net/barton.html
25. Chapter 25, “Waco Burning.”  Depiction of Branch Davidian buildings in flames in the distance, with fields in the foreground.  https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/what-really-happened-at-waco

Mapa federal de zonas de alto riesgo financiero en Austin /
the Austin Redlining Map, 1936 &
A map of Austin School Closures and School Consolidations 2019

A coalition of community groups asked the school board to ask prospective superintendent Stephanie Elizalde a set of questions. One of them involved the history of segregation in Austin. This is the question.

What have you learned about the history of Austin, particularly the reality and legacy of the 1928 city charter and previous efforts at desegregation in AISD? What work, if any, should or must be done BEFORE any efforts at integration?

My answer is below. However, the maps above expose the imprint of federal segregation on to the map of school closures and consolidations. The proposed closures almost all happened in the then and now mixed and integrated African American, Mexican American and Mexican immigrant communities in 1936. It is an appalling continuity that highly trained professionals hired by Dr. Paul Cruz would follow the redlining tracks laid out by racist federal inspectors in 1936.

In the 1890s, African Americans ran for state-wide offices in the Republican and the Populist Party.  In 1910, J.T. Canales won the South Texas seat in the State Senate and prompted a wide and far reaching legislative hearing and investigation into lynching and the Texas Rangers. During WWI, the Texas NAACP mounted state-wide campaigns against Birth of the Nation and lynching in this state.  With the passage of the 1921 and 1924 Immigration Act, county judges lost the authority to naturalize residents into citizenship.  And the return of Black and Mexican American veterans to Texas prompted a severe white backlash against Asian, Black and Latina/o communities demanding equal citizenship and return on their military service. These democratic victories and organized white backlash frame the 1928 City Charter.

I use this preface to say that the Master Plan was part of a larger backlash against the organized presence of Black, Latina/o and Asian families in Texas. The 1928 city charter designated the spaces where Black and Mexican families could live and – more important – could not live; the same charter designated the protection of Barton Springs and Zilker Park – making the expulsion of Black and Brown families from publicly funded goods central to Austin’s self-image.  The 1928 City Charter is emblematic of the way “district-wide” policy can be used to disenfranchise, displace, and devalue specific vulnerable communities, and the divide the planners drew still shape possibilities in our city today.

The charter did not operate independently of other forms of public policy. One of the prominent images featured above is the 1935 Homeowner Loan Corporation (HOLC) map of Austin, Texas. This map shows the areas that the federal government designated as too Black, too Mexican, or too immigrant to deserve federal loan protections for mortgages in these places.

What you will clearly see is how this map heavily overlaps with District 2.

The HOLC policies increased the precarious situation for residents, hand-in-hand with local and state authorities, creating the troubling situations Black and Mexican families faced in this district. And this lasted until organized communities pushed the Clinton administration to decide that redlining should be illegal. 

I support a 50-year effort to invest in schools and communities to begin leveling the playing field – investing specifically where there was historically federally sanctioned disinvestment in schools and staff in the district. 

I support culturally proficient, dual language, project based STEAHM (science, technology, art, humanities, math) curricula in Title I and Black and Latina/o majority schools to help students face significant national and global changes such as climate change, demographic transitions, gentrification.

We are in a district where close to 60% of the students are Latina/o, 7% African American, 5% Asian American,  60% are economically disadvantaged, which would almost mean the district is integrated, except that we know this is not true. Per a recent report by IUPRA, Austin ISD is the most segregated urban district in Texas. Rather, doing economic and racial integration when the majority of students are ‘of color’ and ‘low income’ means reviewing what we really mean by desegregation. What we don’t mean is closing schools and bussing children into racially hostile schools, like what happened with Anderson High School and east and urban Austin in the 1980s.

The numbers for our segregated district indicate that the quickest way to integrate schools is to move white high income families into schools with high resources, strong governance, and solid curriculum that is representative of the surrounding majority communities of color, a genuine integration into the emerging majority cultures of the United States.

Integrating schools means integrating and democratizing staff, administration, curriculum, programs and even the board of trustees. Our country has still not experienced this kind of integration, and we are still experiencing a backlash against the desegregation we experienced at the federal level between 2008 and 2016.